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U.S. Official With Egypt Ties to Meet With Mubarak

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has sent a diplomatic troubleshooter with close ties to Egypt on a mission to Cairo to meet with President Hosni Mubarak and other senior officials, as the administration struggles to gauge Mr. Mubarak’s intentions amid the fast-moving events there.

The diplomat, Frank G. Wisner, a former ambassador to Egypt who knows Mr. Mubarak, landed in Cairo on Monday, said the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. He declined to say whether Mr. Wisner, who served as ambassador from 1986 to 1991, was carrying a message from President Obama.

“He knows some of the key players within the Egyptian government,” Mr. Crowley said. The administration believed it would be “useful” for him to meet with Mr. Mubarak and bring his perspective, he said.

The choice of Mr. Wisner, 72, a respected elder of the foreign policy establishment, raised questions about whether the administration was using him as an emissary to gently prod Mr. Mubarak to resign. Administration officials declined to say whether they had sent Mr. Wisner with any kind of message.

But one senior official said, “When you have old friends get together, it’s a two-way conversation.”

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Crowley said: “We’ve sent a very clear message to Egypt, publicly and privately. But obviously Ambassador Wisner will have the opportunity to reinforce what we’ve already said.”

Mr. Wisner, who has also been an ambassador to Zambia, the Philippines and India, has experience in delicate diplomacy. In 2006 and 2007, he served as a special envoy for President George W. Bush, negotiating the independence of Kosovo and its recognition as a sovereign state by other countries.

“He negotiated very skillfully between the Serbs and the Kosovars,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of state for political affairs, who worked with him during that period. “He is that rare person of high intellect and great operational capability. He is also a very persuasive person.”

Mr. Wisner’s father, also named Frank, was a top official at the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as at its predecessor agency, the Office of Strategic Services, at the end of World War II.

The younger Mr. Wisner was one of a circle of prominent diplomats who came of age during the Vietnam War — a group that included Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who died in December. Mr. Wisner, a close friend of Mr. Holbrooke’s, spoke at a recent memorial service.

Although Mr. Wisner is a decade younger than the 82-year-old Mr. Mubarak, friends said he was the right generation to speak candidly to the president about his options. If he were to nudge Mr. Mubarak to step down, these people said, he probably would not do so immediately, but over a series of conversations.

“That’s the kind of guy you would choose to have that conversation,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to both Egypt and Israel. “The key question, which we don’t know the answer to, is whether the administration has reached a decision on whether Mubarak should go.”

Publicly, the administration continued to insist that Mr. Mubarak’s future was a matter for the Egyptian people. Neither Mr. Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the matter on Monday, suggesting that they wanted to see how events on the ground were playing out before saying anything more.

Mr. Crowley said the administration was looking for evidence that Mr. Mubarak was opening Egypt’s political system. One indicator, he said, would be the revocation of Egypt’s emergency law, which has been in place since 1981 and gives the government sweeping powers to detain dissidents. The White House pleaded unsuccessfully with Mr. Mubarak not to reinstate the law last year.

Officials at the State Department said that Margaret Scobey, the current ambassador, was also in touch with the Egyptian government but that she was busy coordinating the evacuation of American citizens.

The State Department flew 1,200 Americans out of Egypt on Monday to destinations in Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. Mr. Kurtzer said it made sense for the administration to open a private channel, after a week of public statements.

“There are a lot of reasons to do this, even if you haven’t made the ultimate decision of whether he should stay or go,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 2011, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Official With Egypt Ties Is to Meet With Mubarak. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe